Yamanoor Srihari - Experiments in Blogging

Monday, December 01, 2014

Not merely so because it has Julianne Moore in it, this is a movie worth watching for any fans of apocalypses out there.

It has ties to my most favorite apocalyptic science fiction novels, "The Day of the Triffids". I am not saying it was inspired or is a copy of that short but amazing classic. Yet, it appears to be a good mirror in certain ways.

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Time has not been on my side when it comes to writing here. However, this is a special one for which I am making time.

The recent departure of my dearest cat Saxon had me in knots. I consider all my feline companions special, but Saxon was such a loving, friendly cat that it made things very difficult for me. When someone expressed the thought that they had not assumed or known I was this close to Saxon, I could only bring up the example of the Harry Potter Series's "Horcruxes", indicating the cat was a part of me in an inseparable way, even though, in that body of fiction, it was created through evil and used for evil.

The level of grieving did not surprise me, as I have done this before with Squeaky, my first cat, and on that occasion, the passing was planned, though I have come to regret that quite a bit.

I have been struggling variously since he passed on. I was even going to look up and see if people's brains become wired differently when they lose loved ones. My goal has been to celebrate Saxon's life, but my heart has been heavy and I was looking for a sign or some sort of a release. Unequal to the task, last night, I went on a shopping spree, splurging money that I ought not have dared to spend...

Such things never bring you satisfaction. And, they did not.

The Miracle

Then, finally having freed up time, I went back to my gardening today after a hiatus of over 10 days. This past summer, I had struggled to save this Rose plant of mine. Roses are my Achilles' Heel as a gardener. Ironic, isn't it? A gardener that has difficulty with roses? Well, I have been working my tail off to try and save rose plants, but this particular plant just kept going downhill, and I tried pruning as a desperate measure to save the plant. That too appeared to fail, so I gave up and decided I would reuse the pot and the soil. The soil was so hard, I set the "dead" plant aside in my potting area, and never really got around to it. The plant appeared dead all this time, say, a full couple of months..

And then today, I happened to notice the plant had sprung back to life, and I was tempted to relive the famous line of Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldblum, "...life finds a way".

I am no religious man, nor am I a betting man, but I truly saw this plant and saw it as a sign. A sign of renewal, of continuance, of hope and resilience.

The feeling of satisfaction finally crept in, followed by the release. Now, I can celebrate Saxon's life, and create meaning through actions in his memory.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Ron Paul is worried that the Treasury officials have swindled Fort Knox and sold it to foreign powers. Either that, or he worries they are just about to do that. So, he wants tax payers to spend millions of dollars to make sure that the taxpayers don't end up losing millions of dollars.

Don't get cynical on me

Now I know there are some of you that are quite cynical out there. You are probably thinking that all that fracking residue from the natural gas harvested in Texas must be making Paulie look a little crazy.

A few of you are blaming the summer heat.

I hear that some of you think he is just like any other politician and will muddle any issue just to pander to his base, in this case the paranoid people at the "Tea Party" who think he is their "God Father" but have no idea about tea parties and mobs...

Some others among you are just being quite annoying talking about his independent wealth and how this "alternative to the mainstream" guy managed to get his son to become a Congressman as well..dynasty, what?

Very few realize the truth!

The truth, beyond the marijuana smokescreen

The truth is, we need entertainment. Yes, we have Palin and Bachman on one side and Joe Biden, equipped with his on-air F-bombs on the other. But we can't get enough...we are so stoned bored, we can't take regular jokes.

And in "these times of strife", with December 21, 2012 fast approaching, and Obama rapidly spreading our wealth, we need someone to say something so stupid funny that we sit upright and cry laugh...

This can only be achieved if our politicians and their donors are able to access marijuana for "medical" reasons (never mind the fact that there is no cure for what they have) and enthrall us.

Understanding this, Ron Paul stands for the legalization of medical marijuana. It took me a few days to wait for the smoke from his puffs to clear before I understood why he wishes to do this..

This way he can quickly come up with more entertaining paranoid ideas that prove that big government is bad, and the world can only be saved by people from Texas, as was proved from 2001 to 2008! All this needs and could use some "medical", er, "help"....

I can't wait for when we legalize Heroine and Crystal Meth, for medical uses that is!

Proposing a blasphemous alternative

A cheap alternative to counting the gold billets at Fort Knox?

Finding out if people in the Congress and Senate have a collective IQ that exceeds 100...

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Just because...I have always wanted to revisit some of my most favorite poems. Here is "Daffodils" by the eternal Wordsworth, one of my all-time favorites. I still know most of the paragraph, "For oft, when on my couch I lie..."

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
----------------------------------------Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Sunday, March 13, 2011

I always figured that people who pay premium for a brick and think they are part of an innovation must have an element of genius (yeah, that is the adjective I wanted to use, right?!). Now, they seem to be struck with selflessness too.

That's right - they are selfless. All their energy is focused on the damn phony.

First of all, I use my phone as an alarm clock too - but because of all the am/pm jazz, I try to double-check my alarm. And yeah, you have been informed, no matter what happens we cannot stop clocking time backwards and forwards even if it makes us look like idiots. Instead of getting rid of the system Congress messed around with the dates - bravo!

Any normal person would double check the calendar and appointments, but....

In come our iPhone users. So the clock wakes them up late, and the first thing they do is.. go on twitter and yap away...missed my church, missed my yoga...yeah right, good for Yoga!

Not to be outdone, other iPhone owning, tweeting crazies went on the defensive. This proves the point - if you have enough money to spare for an expensive brick, you have so many important things to do...

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Saturday, January 01, 2011

That's right, you read the title! You can read the story as reported in Mercury News, and it reads like a January's fool kinda news story. Here is a slice lifted from the article "kidnapping, false imprisonment, evading police, reckless evasion, resisting arrest and violating a red light into a one-way tunnel".

In case you are wondering what all that is - those are the charges they made while arresting, what might turn out to be a very interesting character named Lark Ann Freeman.

It appears that Lark here calls her profession "saving the world".This summarily the ends the search for someone more egotistical than men who wear white frocks...

As part of her strategy to save the world, which apparently was to end yesterday..and thank God, this blog is still here, ha ha, she decided to kidnap 4 men. She managed to tell three of them that she would pay them money to help her move, and naturally they got into a van operated by a total stranger. The last one - well he was guaranteed a free smoke.

I am not sure exactly how she planned to use these 4 geniuses to save the world from ending, but if she was going to clean the world off stupid people, 4 at a time, being an idiot herself didn't seem to have helped. On what was not such a routine stop involving her straddling lanes, she rammed through a one-way tunnel the wrong way and when she finally stopped...

Number One to the rescue!

That's right - except not the number one you are thinking of. Lark wasn't alone, and together with her passengers she refused to get out when asked to do so. In the meanwhile, the 74 year old guy who succumbed to the desire for a free cigarette decided he couldn't hold it anymore and decided to get out of the cab and apart from letting go, also reveal that there were three more captors in the U-Haul truck...

The questions

While we can all rest easy that Ms. Lark and Co. will not be saving us at least this weekend while she is held on bail, I am sure you, like me have several questions...

1. Why is it okay to get into a stranger's van, just because she is a woman? Sexist and stupid? Yes, granted, the fact that she had a U-Haul van did make it look like she moves..

2. When one of the captives tried calling 911, they were unable to get the call across - what is with that?

3. How did this woman get a license? How did she manage to rent a U-Haul truck? Where do nut jobs like this get their money for all this - I would like to know - the saving the world business does seem to be pretty lucrative till you start straddling lanes and running red lights on the opposite side of one way tunnels...

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Thursday, December 09, 2010

That's right...Linux is on the radio. "Say what", you say? "Bazinga!", I say.

Well, dedicated to the fictitious, yet, affable Dr. Sheldon Cooper, this radio station has a voice that broadcasts the latest stable kernel of Linux, now at 3.6.1 using eSpeak (there's some geek-speak for you), an open source text-to-speech synthesizer.

Of course, I did copy a huge chunk of that aforementioned description from the website, linux.fm

And if you thought that was crazy, they have a sister-site, whitenoise.fm (anyone remember the movie?) that plays white noise, pink noise and brown noise.

Yeah, I am not going to go into all that. There are a lot of people pretending to be busy updating Wikipedia with the definitions of what each of them means. I am going to steer clear!

So, if you do find a rather stoic biologist for a date, maybe the two of you can play some of these interesting stations as you relax...

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Monday, December 06, 2010

The internet is a strange place full of unverifiable rumors and urban legends, ranging from black, socialist, wealth-distributing Presidents to claims of libraries in Alabama!

Several readers have contacted this blogger about shocking rumors causing waves across the internet with claims of a library in existence somewhere in Alabama! The biggest event since the revelation of the "Big Foot" or the "Sasquatch" leaves several unanswered questions than answers:

1. That there is a library in Alabama, and the possibility that more than one exist..!

2. That these libraries do house a book or more than one...

3. That there is a book lover and more than one such book lover in Alabama...

Speculations

The unconfirmed rumors of book lovers and libraries have spread like wildfires across the interwebs (no, not really), with far reaching discussions on what this could mean for a state with bigoted justices of peace (yeah, don't remember that one do ya or y'all?)...

Reality, revisited

All jokes aside, why does a library wait till 200 books are stolen. I mean, at some point you need to start paying attention that books are being stolen right? I mean, in a year, how many books do you expect to be stolen? 10, maybe 20? Even 50 is acceptable?

If you let someone walk away with 222 books over 2 years, at a statistically incorrect average of 111 books a year...your library just, er, sucks!?!

So why bother holding the person on bond for $10,000? Since you are also claiming she was jobless (a detail they could have skipped - not sure what the harping is all about) able to walk past your "security" system as a book lover/thief...why not hire her?

She loves books - won't have a reason to steal, and will probably take good care of your books. But no, this is Alabama....sweet home, eh?

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?

Friday, December 03, 2010

Hollywood has made movies about this stuff. Schwarzenegger has done steroids over this stuff..but if machines did become self aware, do you think they will go all out to wreak vengeance on us...or maybe, they will simply, er, flip the bird?!?!!

Spokane, Washington has some evidence...a pedestrian crossing sign makes a definitive "sign" when asking you not to walk. Of course, city officials would like for you to think otherwise. Speculations range from,

a. A glitch (yeah, right you say?), or,

b. snow, that is wedged into the sign.

I am sure reasoning "b" would be acceptable...however, look at the image and/or the video and judge for yourself!

Claimer: Views presented in this article probably or definitely allude to people real, unreal, imaginary, virtual and otherwise. Any harm or libel cast on people dead, alive or transient is either intentional or otherwise. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, however he refuses to take responsibility for said views and believes the use of "airquotes" to be a birthright. Claims not included in this claim are also claimed.

Copyright Information: Whereas the blog postings themselves are stolen by the author from the recesses of his deranged mind, he holds all the rights to everything on this blog. Yet, he secretly hopes you will copy his stuff to satisfy his ego. He may still sue you to prove to the world that he makes stuff worth pirating...seriously, still reading this?